10 Most Expensive Newcastle Transfer Flops In History

4. Jean Alain Boumsong

Nine years on and we're still scratching our heads trying to decipher exactly what Graeme Souness saw in Boumsong to convince him the alleged France international defender was worth £8 million just six months after Rangers had signed him on a free transfer. Worse yet, the Scottish club were even deemed to have overpaid for this bumbling sideshow of a centre-back in the summer of 2004. A warning sign that Souness was either blind to or chose to blissfully ignore. Boumsong actually enjoyed a decent start to his career on Tyneside, forming a stable partnership with Titus Bramble, but soon fell victim to second-season syndrome and was often ridiculed by supporters as the errors leading to goals began to pile up. Eventually found himself warming the bench before, to the relief of all Toon supporters, he was sold to Juventus in 2006 for £3.3m. In the end he even managed to make the sub-standard Bramble seem like a world-beater, which is a feat in itself.